Liquid Courage

On April 6, 1199, Richard I of England (also known as Richard the Lionheart, also known as Duke, Lord or Count of a variety of places in Europe, also known as the English king who was born in Oxford but didn’t speak English) died.  Richard the Lionheart remains one of the most celebrated figures of old English history, and considering that he’s basically French, he must have been quite the King.

You can bury my heart in Rouen, send my brain to Charroux...

Richard was tall, handsome, courageous, and had a knack for the dramatic.  On the way to the Third Crusade he conquered Cyprus and sold it to his knight vassal (making Richard the first corporate raider).*  He fought Saladin in the Middle East.  On his way back home Richard was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria, who passed him to Roman Emperor Henry VI.  Imprisoning a Crusader King carried the penalty of Pope-delivered excommunication, making Richard a kind of purgatory hot potato (Henry balmed his damned soul with Richard’s enormous ransom sum).  Richard coined the phrase Dieu et mon Droit, which became the motto of the British monarchy.  (Why the British monarchy’s motto is in French is another question entirely.)

Yet Richard’s record isn’t flawless.  He spent only six months of his reign actually in England.  Richard’s role as good absentee king in the Robin Hood story has grown over time, emphasizing the good over the absenteeism.  The Third Crusade was something less than a success, creating future demand for what became the infamous Fourth Crusade.  And while besieging a two-bit, no-name French castle in 1199, Richard got himself killed by a boy with a crossbow.

Richard summoned the boy to his tent, pardoned him for his impertinent castle defense, and sent him away with one hundred shillings ($32 billion dollars in today’s currency).  Richard died two weeks later of gangrenous complications from the arrow wound, and a mercenary captain had the boy flayed alive and hanged.

Still, you have to respect a king whose reputation would allow England to take a French saying as its monarchial motto.  So pour a red lion cocktail out for Richard the Lionheart, a king famous enough to be portrayed by both James Bond and Professor X.

Great actors envision Richard with a sharp goatee

*This incident included binding the former ruler of Cyprus in silver chains, because Richard had promised him that he would not be clasped in irons.  Classic Richard the Lionheart, am I right?

The Boers in the Velt Gang, led by Butch Transvaal and the Orange Free State Kid, are all dead now…but once they ruled Southern Africa!

General Koos de lay Rey, President Kruger, and Christiaan de Wet, leaders of the Boer war effort

The Second Boer War took place in the Wild West of Southern Africa at the turn of the century.  What was it about?  The same thing dust-ups like these are always about, my friend.  Two independent Boer Republics came to loggerheads with the British over diamonds and gold discovered in the area.  British gold miners moved in from the southern Cape Colony, tensions increased, the British government tried to boss the Boers around, somebody cheated at cards, and war was declared.

The thing you got to understand, now, is that President Kruger of Transvaal saw the writing on the wall.  The British had fought the Boers in 1881, and now they were back, the smell of gold and colonialism in their upturned nostrils.  So Kruger allied Transvaal with the Orange Free State, equipped his militia with the best weapons available, and took the initiative.  He told the British they had 48 hours to withdraw, as “el dinero…es nuestro.”  The British laughed heartily at the moxie of the two tiny republics.  So the Boer Republics declared war on Britain on October 11th and shot the bejeesus out of them.

Can we not move? We're better when we don't move.

At first, the Boers whipped the British.  The Boers had no official army, you see, but rather an enthusiastic militia of farmers and hunters.  In hunting, it’s best to hit with your first shot, so your quarry doesn’t scatter.  This applied equally well to shooting the British.  And when community gatherings include 100-yard egg shooting contests (as the Boers enjoyed), you’re going to end up with good local marksmen.  The Boers had superior marksmen, excellent tactics, modern guns, knowledge of the terrain, and the ability to pronounce place names like Ysterspruit, Klerksdorp, Tweebosch, and Groenkloof.  The British, by contrast, kept trying to take the train from Elandslaagte to Magersfontein, only to get off in Bloemfontein, which was ridiculous.

The Boers embarrassed the British from October to December 1899, culminating with three spectacular victories over superior British numbers during “Black Week” (Dec. 10-15th).  After that, the British stopped messing around and changed tactics, over the protestations of a peppy railroad worker named Woodcock who thought the Boers were admirable gentlemen and if he was gonna get his colonialism powergrab repulsed, well there was nobody he’d rather repulse it than them.

Who ARE those guys?

The British brought in troops from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and British South Africa.  They initiated a scorched earth campaign to deprive the Boer militia of sustenance, and forced Boer civilians and sympathetic Africans into inhuman concentration camps (in which thousands died).  They built elaborate defensive fortifications, and began territory sweeps designed to root out Boer fighters.  The British also sent in Lord Kitchener to command the British offensive, and possibly an Indian tracker named Lord Baltimore and the toughest lawman in the West, Joe Lefors, whom you could always identify because he wore a white skimmer.

The Boers, led by chivalrous General Koos de lay Rey and mustachioed Christiaan de Wet, turned to guerrilla tactics to resist the British.  The guerrilla units operated in their home districts, living off the land and conducting quick, violent strikes against British troops and infrastructure.  The traditional British military units at first found they controlled only the sectors they physically occupied.  They had to deal with an enemy that blended into the sympathetic local population and avoided traditional military confrontations.  The British response, scorched earth and concentration camps, caused public discomfort back in England and political hearings were held.  Lord Kitchener was accused of pursuing military objectives with insufficient regard for civilian casualties.

So, in other words, not much here that could be applied to today’s modern insurgency problems.  Ancient history, folks.

By May 1902 the Boer resistance had been defeated, and the Treaty of Vereeniging (or as the British called it, “The Treaty of Ver….thingy”) signed on May 31, 1902 ended the conflict.  Transvaal and the Orange Free State were placed under the British Empire, and became part of the Union of South Africa in 1910.  The Union was the precursor to the Republic of South Africa, which y’all remember as a glitch-free enterprise, of course.

How to Make a “Boer Republic:”

[Ingredients]:

• 2 oz Grand “Free State Orange” Mariner
• 2 oz Godiva “We’re Dutch” Chocolate Liqueur
• kiwi

[Preparation]:

1. Mix alcohols over ice.  Garnish with kiwi slice.

How’s It Taste?

• 4 out of 5; mighty tasty.

Is It Hard To Make?

• 2 out of 5; no.

Does It Pack A Punch?

• 3 out of 5; don’t go overboard.

Hereeeeeeee's Hernán!

On March 4th, 1519, Hernán Cortés landed on the Yucatán Peninsula.  It was a bold move.  Cortés had been given command of a Spanish expedition to the Mexican interior by Diego Velázquez, the Spanish governor of Cuba.  Velázquez and Cortés were colonialism drinking buddies, but when it became clear to Velázquez that Mexican glory > Cuban glory, Velázquez tried to revoke Cortés’ command.  Cortés killed the messenger (literally), and when Velázquez arrived personally to stop him, Cortés waved adios to Velázquez from the helm of a ship.

Cortés sailed off to the mainland with 11 ships, 100 sailors and 530 soldiers.  On the Yucatán Peninsula he met the two people who would allow him to whisper silky words into the ears of the Aztecs: Geronimo de Aguilar, a shipwrecked sailor who had been living with the Maya, and La Malinche, a native woman given as a slave to the Spanish.  Aguilar spoke Spanish and Mayan, and La Malinche spoke Mayan and the Aztec language Nahuatl.  An effective game of New World Telephone ensued, and the rest, as they say, is lamentable.

Moctezuma II greeting Cortés

Cortés was a talented and persuasive military leader, and proved adept at manipulating alliances and social power structures he encountered in the native civilizations.  A massacre here, a hostage taking there, sprinkle with smallpox, and within two and a half years the Aztec Empire was in ruins.  On August 13, 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan surrendered to Cortés’ besieging forces, and that was that.

So pour out a splash of mezcal for the Aztec Empire.  Say what you will about their penchant for human sacrifice and oppression of surrounding peoples; the Aztecs were no match for the wildly successful combination of Spanish colonialism, New World Telephone, and smallpox.